/lit/ - Literature

Writers have very interesting faces.

Look at this photo of Pynchon. Clearly it is not an attractive face, but there's something to it, isn't there?
At first glance I would have to say that he looks a bit stupid, probably because of his thick low brow and his half-open mouth. This is surprising to me because I happen to like his writing and I think of it as smart and witty. I look closer. I see that he also looks very sad. He isn't smiling. Why? He probably knows that he's ugly and he's probably very insecure about it. That self-awareness makes him seem more intelligent.

This particular portrayal of his face reminds me of that absolutely demonic photo of Kafka with Max Brod at the beach. In both pictures Kafka and Pynchon have the same wide ears and hunched stances, and in both pictures Kafka and Pynchon look a little bit like rats. They are men who hide in holes and dark places and from there they report on what they've found in the abyss of their schizoid minds. They are timid and afraid, they are goofy and strange, and they are incomprehensible yet universal.

I wish we had more ugly writers. Too many (Camus, Mishima, Hemingway) are very handsome, but in their beauty we lose a lot of the details that makes their writing so interesting (actually, Hemingway's self-portrayals add much to the psychological depth of his writing in their posturing and hypermasculinity. Can this concept be applied to Mishima? I will re-evaluate this thought)

>>4249330

Or rather, who did?

How are all his novels not on #bookz right now?

Pynchon every penny

What does /lit/ think of Pynchon?

>>2921021
He looks nothing like Pynchon.

Thomas Pynchon is a greater non-fiction writer than DFW.

>>2175586

Ahem. My bad.

Hey /lit/,

Is it ok to be a luddite?

Yes, sometimes

Pynchon general.

Favourite novel of his? Least favourite? Have you ever done the Kenosha Kid? Would you ever consider smoking a blunt with the man?

How much weed does Pynchon smoke before he starts writing?

What do you think Pynchon thinks of all this Assange/Wikileaks business?

Did he predict all this shit?

Ok, he's not exactly the most handsome of men, but GR gave me erections at multiple points so I figure I should at least return the favour.

What happened to all the Pynchon threads?!?!?!?!

Well, you guys sure did troll the fuck outta me. What a joke. Thanks, you bastards.

/lit/, do any of you have allegedly current images of Thomas Pynchon?

I'm trying to decide what to buy next. I'm not sure if I want to read V. by Thomas Pynchon. What does /lit/ think of this book?

>> cannot into plot description
>> cannot into setting description
>> cannot into characters

cool story, bro

hey lit, should i read against the day or mason & dixon?

I'm ready to get my feet wet.

why is he so great lit ?

i read the crying of lot 49 and it was Meh

'someone say my name?

Pynchon.

Guy is a big nerd, incorporates so much information and ideas into his books it makes your brain want to explode. He's anything but prolific, but if I'm not mistaken, he was working on his first four novels at the same time after his stint at Cornell/Navy. I can understand a dislike for Pynchon's style but you really can't say his books are anything less than good.

His reclusive behaviour is just a big fuck you to critics who want to analyze a work through the authors life. I can support this. His only contact with the public has been through the Simpsons. Enough said.

Not to mention he's probably done his fair share of LSD and smokes a lot of weed.

>>Ok... first question... How does one go about getting something published?

How did I do it? I wrote a fan letter to a writer I truly admired, the kind of letter that let him know how seriously I took his work. He wrote back, surprised that somebody cared about the work and wasn't just asking for help with writing a term paper. He asked me to lunch. I took a train to NYC and had lunch with him. He told me if I ever wrote something he would be glad to read it. It took me several years to write something good enough to send to him. I sent it to him. He said his agent wasn't taking new clients but there were other people in the same agency, bla bla bla.

In other words, my parents were working class and not college educated. I was a kid who just spent a lot of time in libraries to avoid having to play sports or dealing with idiots. Lots of people advance in literature because they are well connected. (Look at Frieda Hughes...do you actually think her poems are published because she's GOOD? Think again.) I had no connections. So I made one.

If you don't know how to contact your favorite writer, find out if their manuscripts etc are collected by a library. (Like the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at UT Austin, who buy almost everybody.) Call the library and ask how you could get in contact with the writer. Don't act like a fan. Tell them you're a junior faculty at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, or something.

And if you want to contact Thomas Pynchon, do it this way:

Melanie Jackson (Mrs Thomas Pynchon)
The Melanie Jackson Agency.
250 West 57th Street, Suite 1119,
New York, NY 10019 .

Be sure to include the secret Trystero symbol on the back of the stamp.

>>489027

Girls respond better to a Pynchon the rear!